FDev Trading Statement Jan 2021 - plenty about Elite Dangerous Odyssey timeframes, plus how COVID19 has affected all the devteams

[[Cancelled Consoleer] boppa_]

Like you im no expert but I'll go out on a limb here and say that if Odyssey runs on the OG consoles released in 2013 it'll probably run on those consoles released in 2016 and 2017 given that they are well better.

Nice talking at you.

I fully agree with you here. The eventuality where they don't run on the OG consoles would be the problematic scenario, and presumably Sony and MS would not allow them to release Odyssey just for the later more powerful last-gen models.

 

[Northpin]

In general the lack of commitment to consoles is short-sighted. 4m PS5's sold in the first month, with only a 1080p backwards compatible mode of Elite to tempt them to purchase, and the faint whiff of Odyssey possibly coming at some point in the future, but no native version.

How many of that 4 million are now going to pay full price for a DLC that is
...
...
I'm not sure it makes much business sense to purposefully ignore that potential 4 million x £30, and that's not factoring in however million XBox SX Commanders.

How is that relevant to ED? The number of Consoles Sold? Especially when considering that console's playerbase (XB+PS) is soooo little compared to PC playerbase
If you think it is relevant, then you should count the number of PC/Laptops sold in the last year too.

Lets crunch some numbers that actually matter:
They sold 4 millions accounts - that is PC(Frontier+Steam)+XB+PS - with the vast majority sold on PC (iirc consoles represent about 20-25 % of the PC numbers)
And apparently ED running free on Epic store meant another 8 millions new accounts for ED.
So we have like 11 millions PC accounts and barely 1 million Console accounts.

So, tell me again, how is their lack commitment to consoles Short-Sighted?

I'd say they will be short-sighted to focus on consoles and risk to fumble the Odyssey launch on PC

 

[[Cancelled Consoleer] boppa_]

How is that relevant to ED? The number of Consoles Sold? Especially when considering that console's playerbase (XB+PS) is soooo little compared to PC playerbase

How is it relevant? Simple. It's a sales opportunity missed.

And apparently ED running free on Epic store meant another 8 millions new accounts for ED.

So, tell me again, how is their lack commitment to consoles Short-Sighted?

Of course if you offer something for free you will see a large amount of new accounts.
I'm sure if ED was free on PSStore just like it was on Epic, then there'd also be millions of new PS CMDRs.

 

[starman]

Might not even be a download - I've got about 10 games on Epic, I've downloaded ... 2

I downloaded Free JWE from epic then bought the complete set on steam discounted.

 

[Northpin]

How is it relevant? Simple. It's a sales opportunity missed.

It's a bigger missed opportunity to fumble with their main income source, the pc market
we consolers, as a percentage, make up for a really bad tip, the one you give when you are unhappy with the service at your favorite dinner.

 

[Peter Drakon]

I'd guess at the pc launch consoles are going to get a new Horizons patch also (PC will get one too), just so they can play on the same galaxy (backend servers). Also, for the PC it was promised that without Odyssey you can still enjoy the new planets and many new stuff (just can't walk around) - i'd guess this will be true also for console players.

So, maybe (probably) it's actually not that dark for console players.

 

[Viajero]

How is it relevant? Simple. It's a sales opportunity missed.

There will always be a sale opportunity missed somewhere. But quite often attending to all sales is just not realistic especially when development resources are not infinite and/or if they do have a cost, be it a direct cost or an opportunity cost (i.e. the business needs to take decissions on where best to apply those resources and money). There is always a balance to be had between the resources required, the value and the cost of that additional sale. In many scenarios postponing that diminishing returns sale can actually make business sense.

I know this is not a consolation in any way but as a reference, ED vanilla in Xbox was released only 8 or 9 months after it was released on PC originally. Releasing games in multiple platforms at the same time is hard.

 

[Rubbernuke]

FD can't really balls this up either, because the income from this will springboard other titles like they do. If this does not sell as well, will Sigmar or F1 suffer (or need more funds from other sources) for example?